> The first century of Portuguese discoveries saw a successive stripping away of layers of medieval mythology about the world and the received wisdom of ancient authority – the tales of dog-headed men and birds that could swallow elephants – by the empirical observation of geography, climate, natural history and cultures that ushered in the early modern age.
Technology brings societal change. The world has been becoming smaller with help of each new technological step. Societies can fight it, but it is unavoidable. So, I hope that we focus more on building a good world for us all using technology to improve all our lives.
One can say that it was one of the longest imperiums in history (ending in 1999 with Macau???), but every time that I spend some time in Portuguese cities, I feel just bad. The good thing is that Brazil will carry its tradition for posterity nevertheless.
What do you mean? (Asking this as a Portuguese guy who really doesn't feel at home back there any more)
This almost feels like state-sponsored R&D, 500 years ago.
N19PEDL2•9h ago
hearsathought•4h ago
Passing that hurdle, then you'd have to imagine portuguese being the lingua franca of western europe. Hard to imagine that.
Then of europe as a whole and so on. Almost a joke now.
Portuguese was never the major power of it's immediate vicinity, let alone the world. Portugual, like the netherlands, was a glorified trading network rather than a legitimate empire. And portugual, like the netherlands, were minor powers within europe. Neither were major global powers as we understand the term and neither were powerful nor significant enough to produce a lingua franca of anything.
denismenace•2h ago
nothing more than a glorified crew in New Jersey
andrepd•1h ago
leflambeur•1h ago
The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity and make their religion and language dominate it entirely, in what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They also had to defend the longest coastline.
The Portuguese Empire did exist but AFAIK never did aspire to world hegemony like the U.K. Their idea of empire was best represented by something they briefly had which was the combined union with Brazil after its promotion from colony in 1815.
So, not an empire like the U.K. and never wanting to be an empire like the U.K. but also not a total failure to achieve some version of it, however short lived that was.
rmah•24m ago
leflambeur•17m ago
gib444•14m ago
Every time I meet a laid back, easy going and kind Portuguese person — which is most of them — I always think that explains their relatively unambitious world domination plans.
alephnerd•12m ago
> The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity and make their religion and language dominate it entirely, in what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They also had to defend the longest coastline.
Conquering multiple ethnic Malay kingdoms - a number of whom were armed and backed by the Ottomans, Mughals, and Americans - and unifying them into Indonesia is a Herculean task that I'd argue is much more complex than the Portuguese project in Brazil.
leflambeur•9m ago
I don't reject the notion that NL vastly influenced Indonesia but the impact is not even remotely similar to PT and Brazil.
alephnerd•6m ago
It was largely Amerindians who were exterminated and genocided with ease.
Conquering empires that were near-peers technologically is different from settling a continent which was at the losing end of the Colombian exchange.
leflambeur•3m ago
TheOtherHobbes•18m ago
Portugal was never interested in dominance of Europe - hard to project power to the centre when you're out on the far edge and have more of a navy than an army.
But the trade network was the first truly global network, and very much non-trivial.
antsou•17m ago